


The Artist's Dilemma

by queseyo, SovaySovay



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Adults AU, Jade plays harp, because reasons, musician au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-04 11:34:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4135890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queseyo/pseuds/queseyo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SovaySovay/pseuds/SovaySovay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose, Dave, John, and Jade share a house on the outskirts of a city. The four musicians survive on the minimal payments from gigs they can get, and push through living with each other in the meantime.</p><p>WIP.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Artist's Dilemma

The bow draws over the E string, letting out a long, thin note. The hand holding the bow allows it to tip slightly, so that it plays the A string simultaneously, and a little finger hits the A string and vibrates, so that two Es are sounding out across the gray-floored and pink-walled bedroom. The woman holding the violin closes her eyes, the light from the rainy six am filtering through the window and onto her face. She no longer needs the sheet music in front of her. As the note comes to a close (or what she thinks is a close), the bow slams down on the G and D strings, bringing in the bright sunlight and waking up the house on the hill, and the quick eighth notes and sixteenth notes following close at their heels shaking the dew off the grass and the dust off the windowsills.

From another room, a man listens, counting in his head ( _one_ , two, three, _four_ , five, six), right hand tightening around his bow. He winces slightly at the sound of the violinist’s bow crashing down on the strings, but sits back up in his chair, resuming his counting. The last sixteenth notes fade into the air and he waits two rests before allowing his bow to come crashing down on the C string. The first note, C sharp (worth two beats and a half, he tells himself), is low, dark. As he lets the blow shift to the G string, and his left moves down the fingerboard, he can still hear his ex-teacher’s voice in the back of his head. _Count, David. You have to count._ He locks the voice away, tapping his foot against the old, creaky floor of the apartment, left hand shifting from second all the way down to third position. _Don’t switch positions before you need to. And for heaven’s sake, David, a whole note is worth four beats._ The man swears as his fingers move a bit too fast, too rushed, and the bow glides off the G string, and onto the D, allowing a far too high note (for this piece, that is) to make its way into the duet.

Rose frowns, frustrated, her sweet morning melody suddenly disturbed by Dave’s rapid strumming, interlaced with his favorite style, a frequent dash of pizzicato. She picks off the high note playing from the room beside her, sloping it back into a low tone, smoothing out the sharp edges of the cello’s music. She lifts the bow and brings it down again, clouds of powdered rosin blowing into the air around her, some settling on her yellow hair, turning golden in the morning light, still messy from sleep. She walks in sleepy circles around her bedroom as she plays, her yellow slippers creaking on the floorboards. When they bought this house, it was easily decided that Rose would have the bedroom in the old half of the building, and Dave would have the modern room. She wanders in the little room as she plays, past the bookshelf, around the overstuffed bed with gold and black pillows, steps over the cat sleeping on the rug, watches the dust fall through the bar of light shining through the window, and flings out a last high note to give Dave something to play off. The cello pauses. He must be thinking.

Dave frowns, replaying the high note in his head. He turns his head in the direction of Rose’s room, as if expecting her to play something, to continue the piece, and when she doesn’t, he narrows his eyes, confused. He hums the note out loud, testing out positions, fingers sliding up and down the fingerboard, and finds the note on the A string. He draws the bow across it, playing the last note Rose played and the couple that came before. After a couple tries he nods, putting two and two together. Slowly, he sets the cello down on the floor, being careful not to let it hit the floor in any way, and places the bow on top of it. He reaches Rose’s simple purple door, with her name painted on the front in neat, black paint, in a few strides and gives the door three sharp raps. When she doesn’t answer, he twists the golden doorknob, forcing his way into her room. “Seriously, Rose? Why the fuck did you change the key?” he crosses his arms over his chest, glaring at her.

“What,” she says, snapping her violin under her arm and inspecting the tip of the bow in one motion. She glances sidelong at the cellist standing in the doorway and smirks. “Are you so much of an amateur that you can’t handle a little key change?”

Dave is boxed in. He kicks at the doorframe, waves his arms around, attempts to speak.

“Just...just...fuck you, Lalonde. Fuck you.”

Rose turns back the window, smiling, and plays a few notes in quick succession, just to irk him. He stamps towards her, frustrated and angry, dust shaking from her floor to the ceiling of the bedroom below her, falling on the face of the person sleeping underneath. The cat wakes up and scampers out of the room, his little paws tip-tip-tapping on the stairs. The two yell and condescend and scathe and spar for a long while, until they are stopped short.

 _Plink_. A note sounds from the room below, not a string note like before, but a single collected and still note, drawn out with the use of a pedal. Below the pacing feet of Dave Strider and Rose Lalonde, a young man is standing in his bedroom, a single finger holding down a key on a piano. His eyes are bleary from sleep, and his glasses are shoved on haphazardly. The other hand lifts to the keyboard, matching the note two octaves lower. He hums the note to himself, then begins a steady A-A C-C beat on the lower octave. The high notes are light and rare, spiraling around the crisp morning air through the open window in the room. It’s a simple enough scale, back and forth, but to the suddenly silent Rose and Dave in the room above, it sounds like pinpoints of stars.

In the room beside the man is a young woman, who, contrary to popular belief, has been awake far longer than the other three musicians have. Her long black hair cascades down her back as she lies still on her bed, an arm across her forehead as she gazes out the window, unfocused vision but sharp hearing. Taking her arm off her head, she reaches across the bed to the tall harp standing there. She brushes the strings carefully.

In the next room, the sound of the harp permeates the wall, sending a chill and a shiver up John’s spine. The undertone of the piano beat continues, giving Jade the rhythm of the song. John’s left hand dances up and down the keys, sparking and twisting and changing. The dull, tired air fades from his eyes, replaced by a small fire and an energy, as he abandons the beat and falls into an improvised piece.

Jade is sitting up now, hands working swiftly on the strings of the harp, joining and separating at seemingly random intervals with the piano. Suddenly there is a low, repetitive beat again, from strings plucked in the room above Jade’s. The cello has returned. A sweet twirl of twisting high notes in quick succession emanates from Rose’s violin, and suddenly four musicians are playing in perfect harmony, one to raise the sun, one to track the hours, one to carry in the morning breeze, and one to fill the empty hollow of the house’s last-lingering darkness.

Dave’s back in his chair, bow resting by the legs of it, plucking at the strings. He listens to the tickling of the keys from downstairs, accompanied by the soft, sweet notes that float up from Jade’s room all the way to his. He continues to tap his foot against the floor (force of habit, he thinks, never really got rid of it), keeping the plucking constant, in sync with the trill of Rose’s high, slightly over-the-top high notes. If he could, he would get up and march back to Rose’s room, to tell her stop showing off, but he knows that by doing so, he’d disturb the perfect harmony that all four of them have created on this spring morning.

 _Thump. Thump. Plink. Thump. Thump. Plink._ All of the sounds in the house resonating through the rooms stacked on top of each other mix and swirl, the strings and the keys coming together and becoming a single sound. Rose’s high, clear, piercing, whole notes, the deep rhythmic beat of Dave’s cello, the nomadic and busy tones of John’s piano, and the underlying sweep of Jade’s harp.

One by one, the musicians bring the piece to a close; Rose crescendos, moving up the E string until she reaches a harmonic, pinkie finger barely touching the string as the note resonates around the small, yet cozy bedroom. Jade joins in, plucking the harp’s strings slower than before, allowing the notes to hang in the air as John tickles away at the piano, hands running up and down simple scales before he moves up to the higher, less audible notes. Dave comes in at the last second, dragging out the almost mournful notes. Rose holds out her note for one more beat, and during that pause (in which the violinist gently places her bow down and shifts her instrument from shoulder to bed), Jade takes the opportunity to sneak in a quick run of the mill scale, which John imitates, but two octaves lower than her. Dave pays attention to the last note of John’s scale, and together, the pianist and cellist drag out the C for five beats. The silence that follows is calm, pleasant, satisfying.

“So what’s for breakfast?”

The moment is broken.

“God fucking damn it, Dave, at least have a pause after you’re done playing!” John shouts at the ceiling, his hands curled into tight fists.

“We’re not performing, jackass, we don’t have to.” The walls shake slightly as Dave pounds down the steps, past John and Jade’s rooms on the indoor balcony, and down into the kitchen. John almost yells at him, then decides it isn’t worth it. One hand combing back his ruffled hair, he closes the lid of the piano and sinks back down into the light blue covers on his bed. His left hand pulls at his face over closed eyes for a second, eventually grabbing the glasses and putting them back on the bedside table. The light is shining brightly now through the window, and when John looks for a moment to make sure he put his glasses on the table right, the sun illuminates the dark blue rings in the middle of his eyes. He pulls the blanket over himself again. Now is not the time to get out of bed.

Dave is humming to himself, tossing slices of bacon into a frying pan and dancing across the kitchen to get a box of cereal. He’s so caught up in his imaginary drum solo and dance that he doesn’t notice Rose on the steps until it’s too late. She’s walking down the stairs silently, still tying up her royal purple robe, and brushing the strands of hair out of her eyes. A hand on her hip and a smirk on her lips, she calls to Dave: “Are you making breakfast or auditioning?”

He glares at her, cracking an egg with one hand into the pan. The phone rings. Rose picks it up.

“Hello? Oh, hello there! What? Yes, of course. All of us? Sounds great, we’ll be there at seven.”

“Who was that?” Dave asks around a mouthful of bacon hot from the stove.

“The owner of a bar uptown. We’ve got a gig.”

“Where?”

“Uh...the Shipwrecked Rifle. I’m not sure either, but a job is a job is a job is a job.”

“Guess so. Do you want scrambled?”

“No, I really... do not want eggs, they look like hell.”

“Are you kidding? My eggs are great.”

“Last time you cooked breakfast for us, the building almost caught on fire, David.” Rose moves past him, towards the cupboard. She grabs the kettle, then slides over to the sink, filling it to the brim with water.

“That was one time, Lalonde. And for fuck’s sake, stop calling me ‘David’.” he taps his fingers against the counter, drumming a song as he swipes a bowl from the cupboard with his other hand, and in one swift movement pours cereal into it. Setting the bowl aside, he turns the bacon over, grinning as it sizzles in the pan.

He hears the faint pitter patter of Jade’s footsteps as she makes her way up the stairs, the rickety construction barely creaking under her weight. He steps back in time just as Jade slides in front of him, stopping in front of the pan, and taking a strip of bacon from the pan, ignoring the fact that the food is hot. She shoves it into her mouth, grins at Dave, and waves to Rose, who gives her a nod, a small smile on her lips.

“You know, if you could wait until the bacon finished cooking before you eat all of it, that’d be great, Harley.”

Jade bats her eyelashes at him and gives him a wink. “I did that ’cause that one was about to get burned. I was doing you a favor, you dork.”

Dave grunts, grabbing a plate and placing all the bacon on it, noticing that the edges of some of the strips are charred. Rose stifles a laugh, putting the kettle to boil, as Jade pushes herself onto the counter.

Jade’s feet bounce against the cabinet as she kicks her legs. Rose glares at her.

“Are you four years old?” Jade frowns sulkily.

“Are...are you wearing socks?” Dave raises an eyebrow. Jade looks down, checking her feet.

“Um, yes? Should I not be?” Jade narrows her eyes at the man leaning against the table. He shakes his head, putting a hand to his face and adjusting the sunglasses he had swept onto his face moments earlier from where they were left on the counter.

“I just don’t quite comprehend wearing socks to bed. It seems, I don’t know, unnatural.”

Rose, who has turned back to the food and been silent for some time, smiles quietly to herself.

“Says the twenty-three year old in his ‘rapping clothes’.”

Dave stands, suddenly serious and affronted. He points his finger at the smirking woman by the stove, the other hand in a loose fist.

“When I chipped in for this house--”

“Not _that_ much,” Jade says quickly.

“Shut up, Harley. When I paid my dues for this rickety box we live in, I laid down not only some sick rhymes but _also_ some rules. Rule one: no one-- _no one_ \-- disses the rapping clothes. No one.”

“But they’re so dissable,” a voice says from upstairs. Apparently, John has been listening.

“What do you mean? They’re fucking art.” John is leaning on the bannister, glasses shoved on haphazardly and sleep still in his eyes.

“How long have you had that shirt, Dave? Twelve years? Too long, is the point. You have been wearing the rapping clothes for over a decade. Give it a rest.”


End file.
